Tricky Trapper
Tricky Trapper is the third episode of Huckleberry Hound, debuting in October 16, 1958. It was directed and produced by Joseph Barbera and William Hanna, while the story was crafted by Charles Shows and Dan Gordon. Synopsis The opening is atypical. We get Don Messick narrating over an establishing shot that pans right. The shadows on the mountains and rolling foothills are a nice touch. Walt Clinton, who animated on most of Tex Avery’s greatest cartoons and even drew model sheets for his unit, laid out the backgrounds and Bob Gentle’s brush put them together (poor Bob; ending up being saddled with dreck like The Super Globetrotters and various incarnations of Scooby-Doo). Oh, here’s yet another H-B character with a droopy white moustache. Judging by the insignia stripes on his sleeves (which should be on his upper arm; they’re not seen in the shot below left), he’s a corporal. And we get a variation on the old gag about asking for volunteers to step forward, and all but one step back; the 1951 Heckle and Jeckle cartoon “‘Sno Fun” opens with the same gag in a Mountie station. This being an H-B cartoon, all but one simply turn into a blur of lines that zip off stage to a familiar whisking vocal effect. So Huck is on the trail of Pierre, muttering and reversing the words to “The Mountie motto: We get our man” (memo to Charlie Shows—it’s supposed to be “We always get our man”). Now we get some cute gags over narration about the buddy relationship between a dog (Huck) and his dog (Rover). Huh?? Anyway, they share their bed and their food. And they even sing Clementine together, though the sled dog avoids having to listen to the off-key rendition by putting on ear-muffs, in a gag that got mileage in a number of H-B cartoons. They happen upon Pierre, wearing one of those H-B chequered jackets where the squares stay in place (how did they do that?). Pierre is H-B’s version of Warner’s Blacque Jacques Shellacque, though Daws doesn’t have to do any yelling au dessus de ses poumons like Mel Blanc did in the McKimson cartoons. After a brief retreat into a hollow tree (the dog makes it; Huck doesn’t), the chase is on, though a chopped tree gets in the way (the dog makes it; Huck doesn’t), and the “cliff bit” results in a temporary setback as Huck flies into the sky and gets stuck on a nearby rock face. Incidentally, why is the narrator calling him “Sergeant Huck” when our hero has a constable’s insignia? Snowballs come into play for the rest of the short. Pierre’s hiding behind a rock, as Huck hurls a snowball into his face. Then they play a game of tennis with a rock-concealed snowball, the two remarking to the audience all the while (we even gets a Charlie Shows rhyme: “Pierre does not scare. So there!”). Pierre then tries to escape on skis down a mountain, but the resourceful Huck uses a tiny snowball which, as in a Buster Keaton comedy, grows into a large one as it gathers momentum and captures Pierre with a sputtering-lips vocal effect. And, no, those aren’t real sentences the Quebecois Pierre is speaking that I can tell, though there’s some real French in there. The finale features Huck wailing Clementine, with the empathetic little sled dog taking sympathy on Pierre’s ears. Check the light brown clouds Gentle uses to add to some colour. Pierre proved popular enough to return in “Ski Champ Chump” later in the season, with design modification and uncertainty over his name. The Hi-Q library is put to good use again. This being a snow-filled cartoon, it’s appropriate Jack Shaindlin’s Toboggan Run makes an appearance, though a toboggan doesn’t. We get Geordie Hormel’s “Merrie Olde England frolicking music”, maybe because Canada was an English colony at one time. It seems like a bit of an odd choice. I don't know its name of the name of Shaindlin’s LAF-25-3. Category:Episodes Category:Season 1 episode